


Scar Tissue

by thecoldlightofday



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoldlightofday/pseuds/thecoldlightofday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The different kinds of scars we carry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scar Tissue

Leaving the bathroom, Shane found that the farmhouse had gone almost quiet. People were sleeping, Patricia was crying, and the floorboards beneath his feet creaked like old bones. The sounds of the group dimmed the further he made his way down the hall toward the darkness of Carl’s sickroom. He’d gotten a glimpse of Carl, white as the sheets he was laid out on, Lori bringing the room a welcome splash of color, before he’d retreated upstairs to lick his wounds.

He just wanted to check on Carl one last time, remind himself what he’d had Otis pay the price for (Otis’ debt to pay in the first place, if he thought about it), and he’d come to accept it already—the fact that he’d more than left a man for dead. He’d killed him, sure as anything, even if the walkers had been the ones to finish the job.

“Hey.” Rick’s voice startled him and his hands twitched, moving on instinct for his gun.

“Jesus,” he whispered, the pale florescent lighting cloaking them both in shadow, darkness curving across half of Rick’s face.

“That’s different,” Rick said softly, gesturing at his freshly shorn head, leaning like the strength had entirely gone out of him against the bedroom door.

“Yeah well,” Shane muttered. “Guess I was due for a change.”

Rick looked at him from a distance, really took him in, scanning him over in a way that reminded Shane of the hug they had shared earlier—Rick’s hand on the back of his neck and below his shoulder, as much a reassurance as they were a thanks. Rick testing that Shane was still there. Rick laughed now at the sight of him, Shane with his head shaved, swimming in a set of overalls big enough for two. The sound was clipped short like a shudder, the relief in it palpable, broken and uneven where it started in Rick’s chest. “I forgot that was there.” Rick’s hand followed the line his eyes were making, touching his fingertips a little above Shane’s forehead, moving them against the grain of the stubble on his skull.

“Don’t know how you could, as much as you were crying when it happened.” He closed his eyes against the feeling, Rick’s thumb tracing the outline of the old, faded scar. Years and years since the injury had happened.

“I wasn’t crying. I was concerned.”

“That what you call it?” he asked, because they both remembered Rick blubbering apologies while he pressed a dish rag wrapped around ice against Shane’s head.

They were seventeen, wrestling on Rick’s living room floor like always, Shane pinning Rick’s arms behind him. He hadn’t been expecting it, he always was stronger, but Rick somehow managed to buck him—the force of it sending Shane backwards, head cracking into the corner of the coffee table before the rest of him followed suit. When his vision cleared, the pain no longer blinding, he’d put his palm over the hot, awful throbbing, immediately smearing himself to the wrist with blood. There’d been a trip to the emergency room after, five stitches, and Rick waking him up that night every hour on the dot to make sure he didn’t die in his sleep from the concussion.

“I shoulda known nothing could put much of a dent in your head anyway,” Rick said, grinning even though his face was bleached bone white.

“Harder than steel,” he laughed, though he was more going through the motions, wondering if he’d scar in other places—the cut on his shoulder, the patch above his ear where Otis’ had wrenched a clump of hair out at the roots.

“Thank you,” Rick said after the laughter cleared the air between them.

“Don’t,” Shane shushed him, guiding Rick back toward the bedroom with a hand on his shoulder—Rick following because the blood loss had left him weak. “I said leave the rest to me, and brother, it’s taken care of. No need to thank me for that.”

Rick nodded, mouth pinched like there was something he wanted to ask. Instead, he said, “see you in the morning,” while he eased the bedroom door open.

He watched Rick go back inside—back to Lori, back to Carl, the family Shane had sacrificed so much for—and again he felt Rick’s fingers, broad and gentle, smoothing across the scar on the top of his head.


End file.
